Saturday, January 24, 2009

Remote Desktop to Windows Server console connection not working

For the past several months, I have had an annoyance happening with Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1. When I use the Remote Desktop client - mstsc.exe - I cannot connect to the console session of my servers. I always use the command prompt mstsc /console but it no longer seems to work when connecting to the console session.

I finally did some research today and found that it was changed to where you have to use the /admin switch instead. So, now I have to start my sessions like this:

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Downloading updates for Systems Center Configuration Manager

I found a neat trick the other day when setting up a Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager. The server is not connected to the Internet, yet during the installation, the installer expects to be able to connect to the Internet and download the latest updates for the software. However, the setup allows you to specify a local path to find these updates. If you just make something up, though, you will get the error:

Component manifest was not found or it was invalid

After some digging (okay, a LOT of digging), I found out how to get the updates download without running a full installation. You can run the setup.exe on a workstation that is connected to the Internet and download the updates. I ran this from my desktop computer that did have Internet computer:

\SMSSETUP\BIN\I386\setup.exe /download c:\SMS-temp

I then copied the contents of C:\SMS-temp over to the server I was installing and pointed the installer to that folder. It works like a charm!